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Voters put Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority government on a shorter leash in five byelections Thursday, giving the Progressive Conservatives a long-sought toehold in Toronto and handing ridings in London and Windsor to the NDP.

Wynne’s Liberals held Scarborough-Guildwood and former premier Dalton McGuinty’s Ottawa South stronghold while Toronto Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday won Etobicoke-Lakeshore in the only gain of the night for Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, whose party had been leading in the polls in Ottawa and London.

Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats emerged with bragging rights for the night after handily taking London West — where Hudak was campaigning until the polls closed — and a strong showing in Windsor-Tecumseh, knocking the Liberals to third place in the biggest victory margin of the evening.

“Are we excited tonight?” a jubilant Horwath said in Windsor at a party for her new MPP Percy Hatfield, a former CBC reporter, as she thanked supporters across the province.

“They voted to send a message: they’ve had a bellyful of an arrogant government that takes them for granted . . . more concerned with managing the fallout from the latest scandal than creating jobs.”

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For Hudak, the win by former Etobicoke mayor Holyday over Liberal Peter Milczyn, a city councillor, marked the first Tory seat in Toronto since the 1999 election.

But it was less than Conservatives had hoped with five Liberal ridings up for grabs at a time when Hudak — who faces criticism about his ability to win as leader — has been pitching himself as the best alternative to a Liberal government under fire for the $585 million gas plant debacle.

“You have local issues and other dynamics at play . . . we’ll see what happens in the next general election.”

Newmarket-Aurora Tory MPP Frank Klees, who placed second in the party’s 2009 leadership race, gave Hudak credit for recruiting Holyday but said the party needs to improve the way it connects with voters.

In Scarborough-Guildwood, Liberal community activist Mitzie Hunter held off Tory Ken Kirupa and former TTC chair Adam Giambrone, who took the NDP nomination amid controversy after he had already recruited a candidate there.

The byelections were the first electoral test for Wynne, who took over McGuinty’s minority government in February promising to work more collegially with opposition parties.

Wynne had been downplaying Liberal expectations, saying all along that no matter what happened in the byelections, she would still be premier on Friday.

The byelections were triggered by resignations that began shortly after Wynne became premier in February, when Dwight Duncan and Chris Bentley quit as finance and energy minister, respectively.

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Under the law, the premier had six months to call those votes. Then, in late spring, came resignations from Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Margarett Best, who had been dropped from cabinet, then McGuinty himself as the legislature adjourned for the summer and the gas plant controversy swirled around him. Laurel Broten quit as intergovernmental affairs minister in June.

The timing of the byelections prompted charges from opposition parties that the Liberals knew they were in deep trouble with voters and wanted to hold the contests in midsummer when many Ontarians are vacationing or not paying attention to politics.

A key factor for the parties was getting their supporters out to the polls on the eve of the civic holiday long weekend.

Holding the votes in August also allowed Wynne to get them out of the way before a second report from the Ontario auditor general’s office is due on the power plant scandal.

It will be a deeper look into the costs of scrapping the Oakville natural gas-fired power plant a year before the 2011 election. So far, the tab for axing it and a similar plant in Mississauga during the 2011 campaign to save Liberal seats is $585 million. Opposition parties say they believe that figure will grow.

In Toronto, the “Ford factor” loomed large with Mayor Rob Ford campaigning for Holyday in Etobicoke-Lakeshore and Kirupa in Scarborough-Guildwood, to the point of telling voters that casting ballots for the “corrupt” Liberals after they wasted almost $600 million in tax money on the power plant cancellations would be “just giving a bank robber another gun.”

The Liberals were also under fire for emails deleted by top political staffers in regard to the power plant cancellations, an issue the opposition parties kept alive almost daily during the four-week byelection campaign.

A legislative committee resumes hearings into the gas plant scandal Tuesday after taking July off.

One of the witnesses slated to testify is Laura Miller, formerly a senior adviser to McGuinty, who will be grilled about pressure put on Speaker of the legislature Dave Levac to reverse a ruling that found Bentley breached parliamentary privilege by not releasing documents related to the closings.

That decision put Bentley at risk of a contempt of parliament censure, and was a key decision point for McGuinty in his controversial move to prorogue the legislature last October and announce his resignation, setting the stage for a leadership race that brought Wynne to power.

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